从《了不起的盖茨比》中的男性形象看美国梦的破灭毕业设计.docx

1、从了不起的盖茨比中的男性形象看美国梦的破灭毕业设计 毕 业 设 计（论文） 题 目从了不起的盖茨比中的男性形象看美国梦的破灭专 业 英 语 学生姓名 指导教师 2015年4月21日ContentsAbstract 3摘要 31. Introduction 42. Male Characters American Dreams 62.1. The Tragic Hero Gatsby 62.2. The Dramatic Narrator Nick 72.3. The Ugly Upper-class Tom 83. Fitzgeralds American Dream 9 3.1. Fitzg

2、eralds Pursuit for Love and Wealth 103.2 Fitzgeralds Ration in the “Jazz Age” 113.3 Fitzgeralds Sense of Failure 134. The Relationship between the Male Characters and Fitzgerald 154.1. Gatsby and Fitzgerald 164.2. Nick and Fitzgerald 174.3. Tom and Fitzgerald 185. Conclusion 20 Bibliography 21Abstra

3、ctThe Great Gatsby is one of the greatest novels in Modern American literature. It is a highly symbolic meditation on the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. On the one hand, Fitzgerald shows a running theme of how the American Dream affect

4、s all of the characters in The Great Gatsby, especially the major male characters, Gatsby, Nick and Tom. He also uses the distinctive writing style to introduce the three major male characters. On the other hand, according to Fitzgeralds personality and experience, the three male characters are gene

5、rally considered being written autobiographically reflecting the different sides of the authors characters, which attracts readers to some extent.Key words: American Dream, Daisy Buchanan, Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby摘 要了不起的盖茨比是美国现代文学史上最优秀的作品之一。它反思了一个空前繁荣、物质过剩时代的美国梦的破灭，展现了美国梦对人们日常生活的消极影响，尤其是对男性人物（盖茨

6、比、尼克、汤姆）的影响上。尽管他们对自己的生活都充满了雄伟的抱负，但变质了的美国梦却粉碎了他们的梦想。此外，菲茨杰拉德还运用独特的手法描述了这三个特殊的男性人物；通过对这三个人物与菲茨杰拉德的对照可以看出：作者从某种程度上说是在讲述自己的经历，盖茨比、尼克、汤姆实际上是作家个性特点三个不同侧面的反映，这也是小说之所以成功的魅力所在。关键词: 美国梦；黛西布坎南；菲茨杰拉德；了不起的盖茨比ON THE MALE CHARACTERSIN THE GREAT GATSBY1. Introduction Reading Fitzgeralds works, we can remind of many

7、 literary values from them. People usually show more interests on Fitzgeralds masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Some articles about The Great Gatsby have been published, such as American Dream and Character Symbolization in the Novel The Great Gatsby,On Nick Carraways Dual Roles in The Great Gatsby,Gat

8、sby: Another Fitzgerald,etc. These arguements are both odds and ends, not integrated. So, the aim of this article is to perfectly introduce the three male characters (Gatsby, Nick and Tom). And as we have known, only having enough understanding of the author and his personal life, the article can be

9、 drawed clearly.Although at that time, Mark Twain and William Dean Howells thought that America would become the hope of the whole world, F. Scott Fitzgerald gradually found that that so-called new world was totally a disaster. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived in the midst of the “roaring twenties” an

10、d was part of it all-driving fast cars, drinking hard whisky, and showing an immense delight in those, was perceptive enough to recognize that America was “a moon that never roses.” And as much as he enjoyed the “roaring” of the post-war boom years, he also foresaw its doom and failure. Fitzgerald w

11、as born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul. In his younger age,he attended a private school in New Jersey, then he went to Princeton University. Academic difficulties forced him out of Princeton midway through his junior year; he returned the following fall but he left his college permanently in 191

12、7 and decided to join the army, as World War I neared its end. While stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, he met and immediately fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and leisure led her to d

13、elay their wedding until he could prove a success. And with the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him. In 1922 he published his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned and a collection of shor

14、t stories, Tales of the Jazz Age. In 1925 Fitzgerald managed to complete his masterpiece: The Great Gatsby. His next novel, Tender Is the Night (1934) was received coldly mainly because America was deep in the Great Depression and nobody wanted to read about expatriates in France. Battered by the fa

15、ilure of the book and Zeldas mental breakdowns, he drank to excess and grew seriously ill, died in 1940.Fitzgerald is a famous American modern writer and is called “spokesman in the Jazz Age”. And his greatness lies in the fact that he found intuitively in his personal experience the embodiment of t

16、he nation and created a myth out of American life. The story of The Great Gatsby is a good illustration. T. S. Eliot read The Great Gatsby three times and concluded that it was “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James.”The main theme of The Great Gatsby meditates on 1920s Am

17、erican as a whole, in particular the break up of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material . Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. The Great Gatsby shows a running theme of how the American dream affects all of the char

18、acters: they each have their own aspiration for their own life, but, ironically, their aspiration is only revolved around wealth, and the core of their life is to enjoy happiness from money. And, Daisy, the only heroine, who relates with the other characters, has a perfect vantage point in the story

19、- she is Gatsbys lover, Nicks cousin, Toms wife, and all three are closely linked because of her. Besides, The Great Gatsby is also an autobiographical novel. Fitzgerald combines his experience with the male characters, such as Gatsby, Nick and Tom showing his own experience, life and dream.2. The M

20、ale Characters American DreamThe Great Gatsby is a novel that illustrates the society in the 1920s and the associated beliefs, values and dreams of the American people at that time. These beliefs, values and dreams can be summed up be what is termed the “American Dream”: a dream of money, wealth, pr

21、osperity and the happiness that supposedly came with the booming economy and get-rich-quick schemes that formed the essential underworld of American upper-class society. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the American Dream and the “foul dust” or the carelessness of a society that floats in the wake of th

22、is dream. According to the characters respective expectation, it can be seen that the American Dream is not confined to one social class or type of person, but to the whole nation, everyone.2.1. The Tragic Hero GatsbyIn the novel, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stake

23、s everything on his dream, not realizing that his dream is unworthy of him. To Gatsby, his dream is of spiritual reunion with Daisy, but his prior dream is wealth. He thinks that wealth can solve all his problems: time, Daisy, and love. “Cant repeat the past? he cried incredulously. Why of course yo

24、u can!Im going to fix everything just the way it was before, he said , nodding determinedly. Shell see.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 148) In the novel, Gatsby uses the most lavish party, sumptuous mansion, and gorgeous machine to impress Daisy. And the green light, situated at the end of Daisys East Egg dock,

25、 represents Gatsbys hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy. “If it wasnt for the mist we could see your home across the bay, said Gatsby. You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbe

26、d in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now i

27、t was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 125)In fact, the green light stands for the achievements achieved by Gatsby to some extent. It leads Gatsby to go after the future, the glorious phantasm in his ideal world, not only the lov

28、e for Daisy. However, Gatsby dream is bound to fail. On the one hand, he acquires immense wealth through criminal activities, for instance, bootlegging. “He and this Wolfsheim go and sold grain alcohol over the counter. ” (Fitzgerald 2004: 179) This is the opposite idea of the American Dream, which

29、states that only the good, virtuous and hard working are rewarded. On the other hand, he held an unrealistic view of life and how he could recreate the past. His dreams has distorted in the reality, when his rationality realizes that the image of life and of Daisy does not coincide with the real lif

30、e version. The devastating end of his dream is the finish of The Great Gatsby. Just as Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, American powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.2.2. The Dramatic Narrator NickNick Carraway i

31、s a pragmatic man, who comes from the Middle West. He has distinctive temperament and value standard. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world havent had the advantages that youve had.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 1) He is also a sober, intellect

32、 and reflective one and makes the objective judgment and evaluation to the major characters. His final choice reflects the authors moral orientation. In The Great Gatsby, he does not share the American dream. But still he is striving for something, and he wants to be himself, as he sees himself, tolerant, objective and reliable. The money of the upper class is just a tiny bit of his dream together with his admiration for the rich East Eggers. Mainly, his dream consists of mental values, o